OCCUPANT LOWER LEG INJURY ASSESSMENT IN LANDMINE DETONATIONS UNDER A VEHICLE

摘要

Occupant safety has a high priority in peacekeeping military operations. During an anti tank (AT) mine detonation under a vehicle, the global and local impulse load threaten occupant safety. The proximity of the occupant's feet to the vehicle floor (through direct contact, or via pedals/foot rests) means that lower leg injuries occur frequently in AT mine strikes. Analysis of these injuries has proceeded with surrogate legs originally developed for automotive impacts. However, none of these has been validated for the loading conditions present in a mine strike. Recently, a combined experimental and numerical approach was used to obtain greater confidence in the injury assessment method with lower leg surrogates used in AT mine strike tests. Blast tests were performed using the standard Hybrid III dummy to study the differences between the standard Denton leg and the Thor lower leg model (Thor-Lx). Computational models of the test setups were created using a commercial multi-body code (Madymo) to investigate whether virtual testing could be used for future parameter studies in vehicle design. The current study focused on the validation of the Hybrid III Denton leg. The simulations showed good correspondence to the experimental data and are therefore suitable for use in injury assessment.